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Position he has held since 2008. He is also the head coach of the Academie Lyrique at Vendöm, France, where he works with Professional singers on the major operatic repertoire. Among his other musical activities are composition and piano teaching. He trained at the Music Academy of Tel Aviv University, where he obtained a degree magna cum laude in con- ducting. He also won prizes from the Federman Foundation and the Ronely Ricklis Foundation for young conductors. He continued his studies in the United-States, first at the Cleveland Institute of Music and then in the prestigious program for young conductors at the Oregon Symphony Orchestra. He was a fellowship conductor at the Aspen Music Festival and had conducting engagements with several orchestras in Illinois, Florida and Kansas. He also worked during this time at the Northwestern University with Dame Mignon Dunn of the Metropolitan Opera. In 2004 Itai decided to settle in Paris and to devote himself to composing. He composed many works for voice, including three large Jewish cantatas (Machzor Chayim, Pirkei Tchina Umechilah and B'reshTt). He conducted the first of those, Machzor Chayim ("Life's Cycle"), in 2007 for its world-premiere performance in Paris. Between 2005-2008 he has closely worked with conductor Francis Bardot at the Conservatoire de Levallois-Perret as well as creating The Kol Arta Ensemble with soprano Aviva Timonier. Since 2009 he has conducted numerous con- certs with his choir at the Copernic Synagogue, performing many world-premieres of his own compositions, as well as compositions by many other prominent Jewish composers. In 2010 Itai took the Position of music direc- tor of the choir Choeur de Chambre de la Cite. In December 2012 Itai took the Ensemble Choral Copernic to sing in the prestigious Louis Lewandowski International Festival in Berlin. In June 2013 the choir premiered his mov- ing new composition AI Naharot Bavel (alongside Les Polyphonies HebraTques de Strasbourg) at the Jewish Music Festival in Alsace. He has written four books of piano etudes, as well as chamber music, a children's musical and a great deal of Jewish choral music. His composition Kol Nidrei and his piano toccata were broadcast on radio France Musique and his Chanuka Medley was published by Transontinental Music Publication and released on the latest CD by The Lakeside Singers (Chicago, IL). Several other works have been played in England, the United States, Berlin and South Africa and at the international festival of La Voix Etouffee in Paris, where his piece Shlosha Yeladim ("Three Children", dedicated to the children in the Holocaust) was premiered. ANDREA ORLANDO Andrea Orlando is a composer, orchestrator, arranger and producer of instrumental and vocal music, film and theatre music, as well as a pop and rock lyricist and songwriter. He's a choir conductor and vocal coach of different choral associations of sacred and secular music, both classi- cal and modern. He is also a lead singer and singing teacher for children, young and adult people. He performs as a tenor in ancient, chamber and classical music, and as a lead singer for pop, rock and Musical Theatre, for both live shows and Studio recordings. OLEKSANDRA SOMYSH Oleksandra Somysh is a Yiddish singer and performer, one of the leading actresses of the Lviv Jewish Theatre Debüt, the founder and the leader of the band Varnitshkes, and the administrator of the festival LvivKIezFest which is organized by AUJCF Hesed-Arieh. Alexandra was born in Lviv (Ukraine) in 1980. She graduated from Lviv I.Franko National University, obtaining the Specialist Degree as a philolologist-folklorist. In 2001 she became a lead singer of the Lviv Klezmer Band. The band was involved in the filming of the documentary Der Stille Bug (2004), produced by German Company WDR-ARD and presented in Cologne and Bonn. At the same time Alexandra tours extensively in duet with her concertmaster Tatiana Kislenko and in duet with her husband Alexey Darmodekhin with a program of songs in Yiddish entitled Anachnu. In 2007, she created the vocal and instrumental ensemble Varnitshkes. It’s a Jewish song-oriented band aimed to attract the younger generation to the Yiddishkayt culture. The band is successfully performing in Ukraine and abroad, appearing in Poland, Germany, Austria, Italy and Russia. In 2008, Alexandra trained on the Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture in New York. Since 2001 she has taken an active part in Klezmer Forums in St. Petersburg, Kiev, Moscow, London, Kharkov and Kazan. She and her Ensemble also participated in the European Jewish Choir Festival in Vienna (2013) and Rome (2014). Alexandra is the winner of awards in the Jewish Musical and Theatrical Festivals - among them Hatikva (Kiev), Light a Candie (Moscow), Chernihiv Autumn (Chernihiv) and the festival Constellation of Lion (Lvov) which granted her the title of Best Female part in the play Shosha.
